Between Yellow And White On One Side. Between Blue And Black On The Other
Notes
these two tracks were specifically created for this cassette release, and are part of a trilogy of cassette related works that began with a piece i did for an online exhibition for ica london in early 2012. all three of the works used my own 4-track cassette masters from the mid-1980′s as material for these new works.
each piece was composed using an old 4-track cassette-master of songs that i recorded in 1983/84 in my bedroom. because the 4-track cassette deck ran at double speed, the tapes played now on a regular cassette player run at half speed – with the left side running in reverse, and the right side running forwards. as i listened to the master tapes, i captured various snippets, and used them to build new works – bringing my past into the present.
the original 4-track recordings were made a year or so out of high school, as well as a year or so after leaving the “seditionaries”, the los angeles punk band that included me as its lead singer. the original 4-track masters were first attempts to move into a territory between the darkness of bauhaus and joy division and the jangly dissonance of early felt, gang of four, orange juice and josef k.
although i’m not entirely sure what wason these two master tapes (almost nothing was labelled), the weird slow recordings still managed to offer bits that sparked memories, yet at the same time most of what i heard was unfamiliar – feeling like new material.
i tried not to process any of the original sounds other than using some eq, so that the quality of the sound sources (a casio, my voice, guitar, drum machine), as well as my original sound making actions, were still able to “speak”. thus, none of the sounds have been dramatically altered.
Steve Roden

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews